Muammar Gaddafi Wants His Own Costume Exhibit At The Met

Horacio Silva has probably one of the most fascinating jobs in the fashion industry. As the fashion news and features director of T, The New York Times Style Magazine, Silva covers a lot of ground and writes about a wide range of stuff. So it may or may not surprise you that he got a letter from someone claiming to represent embattled Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, asking for Silva’s help in securing an exhibition of the dictator’s clothing at The Costume Institute.

The Costume Institute, if you recall, is that branch of The Metropolitan Museum of art that puts on an exhibit about the fashion industry every year. Its upcoming exhibit is a retrospective of the late Alexander McQueen‘s work and contributions to the fashion industry. And Gaddafi’s rep says the man responsible for all the turmoil in Libya at the moment would like nothing more than to see his clothes go on display there.

There is intense interest in our proposal for a retrospective in 2013 of Colonel Gaddafi’s four decades of superior dress sense … It is not only African and Arab leaders who have been influenced by his style and substance but many western rock stars and celebrities have also been won over by the Gaddafi look: most notably Michael Jackson in the 1980′s copied the signature motif military style of our leader to great chart success on his own terms.

You can read the rest of the letter at The New York Times (assuming you haven’t used up all 20 of your allotted monthly reads yet), which includes information on exactly how many pieces of “sartorial magnificence” Gaddafi owns. We don’t know how Anna Wintour would feel comparing McQueen to Muammar, but in the meantime if you want to how you can chart success on your own terms, check out our slideshow of Gaddafi’s style.